In the art of manufacturing frozen confections such as ice cream cones, a moving assembly line is used to continuously process the confections. In the instance of ball-top ice cream cones, a wafer cone is provided by some means and manner into a fixed position on the assembly line. Often, hand placement of the wafer cones occurs by a human operator. Alternatively, the human operator may place stacked wafer cones within a de-stacking mechanism that assists in automating the initial phase of frozen confection manufacture. The wafer cones are commonly held within an upright position via some tray mechanism or truncated cone holder. The wafer cones are normally-coated on their interiors with a liquid chocolate in order to provide a moisture barrier from subsequent filling with a semi-frozen product—e.g., ice cream. The chocolate coating is typically sprayed from above into the upright wafer cones. Extrusion nozzles are used to fill each wafer cone with the semi-frozen product as the wafer cones move into selected placement along the assembly line. The wafer cone filled with dry-coated, semi-frozen product is then moved along the assembly line into a hardening chamber. Further downstream, a dry coating apparatus is placed above the assembly line for covering the semi-frozen product with ground nuts or similar edible material. Subsequently, the frozen confections are packaged into wrappers and boxed for shipment and sale to the ultimate end-user in a manner well known in the art.
While such manufacturing of frozen confections has existed for a long time in the art, there has been room for improvement. Such needs are clear when wastage is considered. Specifically, spraying of a vertically oriented wafer cone from above often leads to overspray and wastage of the chocolate liquid. Moreover, the chocolate liquid tends to pool at the bottom of the wafer cone, thus often requiring an excessive amount of spray to evenly coat the wafer cone's interior. As well, dry coating from above via sprinkling of nuts or other edible material often results in uneven coating and related wastage of such dry coating that does not readily stick to the semi-solid product. Due to food safety concerns, it is often not possible to reuse the chocolate liquid overspray or unapplied dry coating materials. Some efforts in the art have been made to alleviate the need to maintain the wafer cone within an upright position to thereby reduce such wastage. U.S. Pat. No. 3,985,223 shows one such example of an upright gripper.
There exist known efforts in the manufacture of ball-top cones to provide an assembly line with mechanisms that pivotably present the wafer cone in a movable position. Such mechanisms that hold the wafer cone in a moveable position are commonly referred to as grippers. In such movable position, the wafer cone may be presented along the assembly line in an inverted position and coated with a liquid chocolate spray from below. In order to overcome the undesirable effects of moisture migrating from a relatively moist ice cream material into a relatively dry cone, the frozen confection industry has provided a coating layer between the cone and ice cream to prevent migration of such moisture. The standard coating layer that has been used by the industry is a chocolate product that is vegetable oil based and thus provides a relatively water-impermeable moisture barrier. In manufacture of the ice cream product, the cone is coated by some form of spray applied to the interior of the cone prior to introduction of the ice cream in order to maintain the crispiness of the cone.
Spraying the liquid chocolate from below allows the spray to be forced well into the cone whereby gravity provides for a secondary movement of the spray down the interior of the cone towards the rim. The movable cone may then swivel into an upright position to be filled from above with the semi-frozen product. Thereafter, the movable cone may then again swivel to place the ball-top in a downward position such that the movable cone may be dipped into a bin or tray holding the dry coating of choice. The moveable cone would then continue along the assembly line to the hardening chamber and be packaged in a known manner as discussed above. There are commonly three different types of gripper mechanisms for pivotably presenting a wafer cone.
One such known example is a pin gripper that utilizes a skewer-type of arrangement including a pin used to puncture and hold the movable cone rotatably about the pin. While pin grippers positively hold the wafer cone, they suffer from drawbacks that include both increased cone breakage and creating two holes through the wafer. The holes in the wafer are also through the chocolate layer and underlying ice cream product. This often reduces product shelf life as the holes provide a path for moisture to migrate from the ice cream to the wafer and thereby soften or otherwise reduce the wafer crispness.
Another such example is a pin-less gripper with a positive opening that utilizes a relatively complex clamp and spring arrangement to hold the movable cone. The mechanical complexity involved in such an arrangement reduces access for cleaning surfaces and as such represents a food safety concern.
Another such example is a pin-less gripper with a passive opening shown by EP 0925721 which utilizes a pressure-fit arrangement to hold the movable cone. Such a passive manner of gripping does not provide a secure holding of the wafer or needs a strong pressure on the wafer that increases the level of breakage. This leads to premature release of the wafer cone and significant wastage problems.
None of such gripping arrangements provides the necessary holding power in contemporary high-speed assembly lines. Further, many such holding arrangements often lead to damaging effects on the cones and can lead to total wastage of a broken or otherwise unusable product. Still further, the known mechanisms are relatively complex and therefore tend to be mechanically unreliable and require much maintenance.